Gunther Schuller, then 31 and serving as principal horn at the
Metropolitan Opera, started planning his orchestral work
Spectra in 1956 and finished composing it in 1958. The
premiere took place in 1960; Dimitri Mitropoulos conducted the New
York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall.

In Schuller's recent autobiography about his early years,
Gunther Schuller: A Life In Pursuit Of Music and Beauty,
he writes, "Mitropoulos's generosity to me manifested itself in
many ways, but most significantly in his determinate devotion to my
music, including the commissioning in 1958 of what was to be one of
my best and most important early compositions, Spectra. .
. The three performances given were remarkably good,
considering the difficulty and complexity of the work, which was in
a style that most of the Philharmonic musicians had neither
experienced nor liked nor understood. But I know the performance
was as beautifully played as it was because of Mitropoulos's
obvious devotion and commitment to my music, not to mention his
intimate knowledge of the work. I also like to think - I could feel
it at the rehearsals - that the musicians liked and respected me
for having played with them so often over the last fifteen years,
they thought of me as one of them. They also liked and respected my
father [a longtime member of the orchestra]. So, it was almost like
a family affair. But in the end it was Mitropoulos who once again
extracted from those musicians not only a technically secure but
also a highly expressive performance - a kind of miracle."

Spectra takes several ideas that were in the air in the
mid 1950s and merges them into something that is different from the
sum of its parts and strikingly original. It was written for a
large orchestra, subdivided into six chamber ensembles - Schuller
devised a radically different seating plan for the musicians that
makes performance practical and possible. Each ensemble can operate
independently but also interacts with the others to create one
collaborative identity - what Schuller, in his original program
note, called a "web of sound." At a time when stereo recording was
being developed Spectra is also about music experienced in
a spatial context. The music creates and moves across an aural
landscape that Schuller delineates precisely. Several other
20th-century devices appear - vast waves of color, as in Varèse,
for example, and the use of changing strands of color as form and
structure. Spectra also synthesizes the opposing manners
of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, 12-tone procedures propelled by
driving rhythms. The whole thing adds up to an astonishing
20-minute firebomb.

The work is not quite a repertory piece yet, but adventurous
conductors have taken it up as a mid-20th-century classic. Former
BSO music director James Levine, for example, conducted a student
performance as far back as 1968; he later conducted and recorded it
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and celebrated Schuller's 80th
birthday by leading the BSO in performances in Symphony Hall in
2005.

This performance is another in this Tanglewood 75th Anniversary
download project that features a prominent composer conducting his
own work. In 1965, Schuller was appointed director of new music
activities at Tanglewood, a position he held for four years before
being named the artistic director of the Tanglewood Music Center
(1970-1984). In addition to being a prolific composer, a gifted
conductor, a prominent writer on music, a music publisher and
record company executive, Schuller has been a dominant figure in
musical education. He was one of the giants in the history of the
Tanglewood Music Center, and he used the post not to further his
own career but to showcase countless other adventurous composers of
his own and younger generations. His departure in 1984 was painful
both for him and for Tanglewood, but he has returned several times
for performances of his own music and this summer gave the spoken
address at the opening exercises of the Tanglewood Music Center In
1994 Schuller's Of Reminiscences and Reflections won the
Pulitzer Prize for music. The Boston Symphony Orchestra
commissioned his most recent major orchestral work, Where The
Word Ends, and James Levine led the world premiere in 2009.
His most recent work, Dreamscape, commissioned by the
Tanglewood Music Center, had its premiere under Schuller's
direction on July 8, 2012, and it will be repeated during the
annual Festival of Contemporary Music on August 13 (Schuller was
the creator of this festival).